Thursday, September 01, 2016

National Review's Republican of the year: Hillary Clinton

Jonah Goldberg's new piece is "Time to John Birch the Alt-Right. In denouncing the fringe movement, Hillary treads where the GOP will not." He praises Hillary's bravery in denouncing a groupof conservatives.

Really? When will she denounce Black Lives Matter as the racist, black supremacist group it is?
Of course, that would take guts.From Goldberg:

Last week saw one of the most remarkable moments of this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists who have jumped enthusiastically on the Donald Trump train: the so-called alt-right.

“This is not conservatism as we have known it,” the politician said. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it.”

The politician was Hillary Clinton, and that’s what’s astonishing. Clinton is normally comfortable unjustly condemning conservatism and the GOP for the sins of bigotry and prejudice, not exonerating it. After all, she coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Praising Hillary comes easy for the tax-exempt conservative think-tank crowd this year. Their donors are Hillary donors this year because Trump cannot be bought. Goldberg actually works for the American Enterprise Institute, as does Steven F. Hayward.

The alt-right movement of punk conservatives is following Trump as he smashes the doors of American politics. For years, National Review writers have moaned about how the left has taken over society, and here comes a group to challenge that, and the first reaction is to label it racist.

Why?

Because the movement rivals the National Review. Conservatives who put America first rival the globalist conservatives, who want to play the game by the rules written by the liberals.

Basically, the National Review is hiding behind a Democrat to expunge a rival.

Goldberg's piece derided the Alt-Right movement as a small band of idiots not worth our time. If so, why did he devote an entire column to them?

He ended the piece with a regurgitation of Buckley versus the John Birch Society imbroglio:

William F. Buckley recognized that the Birchers were being used by the liberal media to “anathematize the entire American right wing.” At first, his magazine, National Review (where I often hang my hat), tried to argue that the problem was just a narrow “lunatic fringe” of Birchers, and not the rank and file. But very quickly, the editors recognized that the broader movement needed to be denounced and defenestrated. Buckley grasped something Hewitt and countless lesser pro-Trump pundits do not: Some lines must not be blurred, but illuminated for all to see. Amazingly, Clinton is doing that when actual conservatives have not.

So these sweet little old ladies (and some men) were not the right kind of people to stand up to liberals in the 1960s.

OK. Who stood?

Liberals rolled over conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s, as Buckley also stiffed Nixon in 1960. For all its hype, the National Review has been a loser for 60 years, both in terms of money and policy. Many of us followed the rats down the rathole in supporting the War in Iraq. Twice. Never again.

Unless Goldberg can offer a viable alternative to alt-right, I suggest he button it.

Oh and let us talk race, shall we? Barry Goldwater was the most racist presidential nominee since John W. Davis. He later was the lawyer in Brown versus Topeka, taking the school board's side pro bono.

Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent nomination undid all the hard work and goodwill to the black community by Everett Dirksen, forever branding Republicans as racist.

National Review seemed to be all in for Goldwater. Buckley himself, the editor-in-chief, was one of Barry’s most visible and quotable public advocates. Bill’s brother-in-law, Brent Bozell, was the principal author of Barry’s manifesto, The Conscience of a Conservative. Our publisher, Bill Rusher, was a prime mover in the Draft Goldwater Committee. Another editor, Bill Rickenbacker, used to amuse himself by drafting remarks for Barry and then hailing them in print as “brilliantly insightful.” I was the Washington editor, succeeding Bozell, and author of the Cato column, which was described not inaccurately as “a mouthpiece for the Goldwater forces.” My weekly report was more than occasionally one long leak from the Goldwater campaign.

We were a band of brothers at NR, a platoon of young-fogey conservatives flush with revolutionary fervor. We knew exactly what Wordsworth meant when he wrote of those present at the Paris revolt: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.” To all outward appearances, National Review was a virtual house organ of the Goldwater movement.

Well, it was.

Voters supported Civil Rights and punished Goldwater, who took only five segregated Southern states and his home state, Arizona, which was not a hotbed of racial harmony at the time either.

While the Goldwater crowd takes credit for Reagan, his victory came 16 years later -- after the creation of Medicaid, the Great Society, the EPA (under Nixon) and Roe vs. Wade. None of that damage has been undone. I would argue that the nomination of Nelson Rockefeller would have been a closer loss for Republicans without the tarring of racist. That would have given us a two-party system. Reagan could have been the 1968 nominee.

What might have been.

John Birchers did not do this. Buckley did. John Bircher votes count the same as Weather Underground votes, with one difference. Democrats didn't denounce the latter.

I say we should outsource the denunciation of Republican fringe groups to the Democrats. They never police their own, why should we police ours?

And now that Goldberg and company are Democrats, they can do it. And they are.

The traitor! "Guilt-by-association," huh? I'd say he is guilty. What a case of projection! And the John Birch Society seems to have been right in a lot of things.

(From Wiki - not always the best or most accurate but the fastest look-up) "The organization supports limited government and opposes wealth redistribution and economic interventionism. It opposes collectivism, totalitarianism, and communism. It opposes socialism as well, which it asserts is infiltrating U.S. governmental administration."

That sounds like a good, conservative attitude to me, and that last sentence is very prescient. Also, consider this (also Wiki):

Sounds pretty racist, huh? And #BLM is pretty upset at the Democrats for the leak of their condescending directive on how to deal with #BLM. And Jonah is praising the winner of the 2009 Margaret Sanger Award? The world has officially been turned upside down. I've gotta go outside and get some air! - Elric

National Review punching to the right for sixty years keep the movement small and manageable enough that it wasn't effective and was easily taken over by neocons who were finally able to kick out the paleos. That's how we ended up with the Bushes and twenty years of war in the Middle East. The movement ended up being so worthless and ineffective that it ends up being replaced by a bunch of meme producing frog worshipping kiddies who are smart enough and courageous enough to actually fight the left on their own terms (and are winning), and poor pudgy Jonah plays the part of his biblical counterpart, both as missionary to reform his enemy (the frog worshippers) and now as they are doing the Lord's work, he sits under his fig tree hoping that God (maybe since he's Jewish I should spell it G-d) will strike them down. Well, your god Buckley is dead, Jonah. Might as well go back and ask the fish to swallow you. No one is swallowing your arguments.

John Birch Society was before my time. I had always heard that Buckley had them kicked out of the conservative movement but I never knew why. From what I've read recently, it was because they were rabidly anti-communist and thought our government and society was infected with communists. Well, it seems they were right, weren't they?

I don't understand the comparison of the John Birchers to the Weather Underground either. The Weather Underground was a terrorist organization, wasn't it? Bill Ayers (Obama's ghost writer) was a Weather Underground guy, wasn't he?

Goldberg, the leader of Buttheads for Crooked Cankles. This is why Dimocrats win. They stick together. They don't denounce any of their supporters no matter how racist or un-American they are. Clinton's crimes were far worse than Nixon's but Dimocrats rallied around Clinton while Republicans threw Nixon to the dogs. And look how Dimocrats are rallying around Crooked Cankles possibly the most corrupt person to ever run for president and Jonah is supporting her. He's dead to me. At least now we are seeing who the real RINOs are and Goldberg is one of them.

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I live in Poca, West Virginia, with my lovely wife of 40 years, Lou Ann. I am an Army veteran and Cleveland State graduate. I retired after 40 years as a newspaperman. In 2016, I published "Trump the Press," which drew rave reviews at Power Line and Instapundit.